Week 8, reflections on readings. History of Eng.Ed.

After the reading of Seely’s article I see some kind of paradox in the development of Engineering Education as a discipline. May be it is just my impression, but I still would like to share that.
1. People always were dissatisfied with the quality of Engineering Education and always complained that it does not correspond with “the real world” needs.
2. In past , Engineering Education was orientated towards development of practical skills with minimal focus on science and fundamental theoretical knowledge. Later (including present time), people complain that Eng. Ed. is too scientifically directed and does not provide appropriate practical skills.
3. Since the WW2, and up till now, the Government money (and the fights between schools to get this funding) always was a significant factor, which influenced on the development of Engineering Education.
In the second article (for this week) Dorst tried: (1) to identify what is design and (2) to establish the methodology of this process. He argues that the very first attempts to find out how a problem-solver makes decisions came from 1960-1970, when the idea of artificial intelligence was very popular. Dorst argued with Simon’s theory about the boundaries between well-defined and ill defined problems and their roles in problem-solving process. It was interesting article with many different perspectives on design, but in general, the author concluded that design process is still unknown, and many factors may influence on designer’s decisions: “The design is a revolution of paradoxes between discourses in a design situation” (p.17).
This is not too long posting, see you all in class.